The mayor, the church and crime

It is a very human reaction to cast blame elsewhere, to try and cast responsibility elsewhere. However, when it comes to the crime crisis sweeping this country, blame has to be shared by several groups and individuals and so is the responsibility for dealing with that crisis.

I don’t know what research, if any, Mayor Atherly did before he made his statement about the church failing to do anything about crime but in condemning and criticising he did an injustice to many Christians in Trinidad and Tobago who have been toiling, without any fanfare or acknowledgement of their efforts, to break the curse of crime and rehabilitate criminals.

For sure the mayor’s comments would have been heavily influenced by his own attitude toward the Christians. I am not aware of his religious affiliations.

I hasten to point out here, that I am not seeking to criticise the mayor but merely to indicate that his comments may have been made from a position of being outside the Christian churches looking in. It is clear that he is not very familiar with the activities taking place in churches throughout the country.

I would recommend, therefore, that Mayor Atherly visit one of the many Christian churches operating within the city of San Fernando — Faith Centre, Revival Time Assembly and the First Church of the Open Bible immediately come to mind — and he will see for himself that these churches have been actively fighting crime in ways he cannot begin to imagine.

For years Christian churches have been preventing people from embarking on lives of crime and drawing criminals away from crime by encouraging positive lifestyles. Churches have been active working against many of the factors that encourage crime, including alcoholism, drug addiction, prostitution, poverty and general lawlessness.

Many are the men and women who can testify to the fact through intervention, prayer and counselling from Christians they were saved from lives of crime. Many are the former perpetrators who are now upright, law-abiding citizens through the efforts of the Christian brothers and sisters who seriously pursue the mandate of winning souls and transforming lives.

I can also draw specific examples of anti-crime programmes that are being carried out by Christian churches in this country. Perhaps Mayor Atherly has not heard about Operation Salva-tion, an initiative aimed at the epicentre of this country’s crime crisis, the Morvant/Laventille community.

Operation Salvation is the brainchild of Pastor Joseph Caines, who gave up his comfortable life in another district to move into Morvant where he now mobilises churches throughout these troubled communities to battle the crime wave.

Members of Operation Salvation regularly venture into areas where the average politician would not venture without an entourage, including armed bodyguards, to meet people caught up in criminal lifestyles at the point of their needs. They have gone house to house in these areas, staged crusades, gospel concerts and other activities, all with the aim of drawing people out of negative pursuits.

Pastor Caines’ wife, Arlene, actively volunteers at Malick Senior Comprehensive, working with students and teachers there at the preventative level.

Perhaps Mayor Atherly may also be unaware of the work of Adrian Alexander, an attorney and a born again believer, who has been operating at the level of restorative justice, going into the prison system and offering rehabilitative programmes to steer inmates unto more positive paths.

Space does not allow me to describe some of the other anti-crime initiatives of the Christian churches in this country but I wish to point out to Mayor Atherly and other critics that these efforts are multi-faceted and ongoing. He doesn’t have to take my word for it. All he has to do is contact a Christian church and he will see for himself.

(ssheppard@newsday.co.tt)